Fahrerstimmen – Tag 1

“The car is not yet where it was in Barcelona. Certainly, it’s better today than in Australia. It was a better day overall, but we still need to pick up the pace for tomorrow. I am not entirely happy. It has been quite a tricky day because the track was very slippery and it was difficult to always extract the best from the tyres. We were on a different strategy compared to other drivers and teams, that’s why for tomorrow we still need to improve. I think we have some more potential in the car that we have to unleash for qualifying”

“I think it was a good Friday and balance wise I think we are definitely looking better than in Australia. Having said that, it’s better to keep our feet on the ground. I’m pretty sure our rivals didn’t show their real pace today, so tomorrow will not be an easy day for sure. Overall I’m satisfied as we were able to run our full programme, including some fast laps in the second session, as FP3 will not be that representative because of the temperatures. I felt more comfortable in the car lap after lap. Now it’s all about putting everything together tomorrow”

"Das war ein hartes Stück Arbeit für alle. Im ersten Training war es unglaublich heiß, die Streckentemperatur betrug 50 Grad. Dadurch hatten alle mit den Reifen zu kämpfen. Ferrari schien von Anfang an schnell zu sein und konnte sich danach sogar noch steigern. Es ist also ganz anders als zuletzt in Melbourne. Wir hatten etwas mit der Fahrzeugbalance zu kämpfen, konnten uns aber für das zweite Training verbessern. Momentan sieht es so aus, als ob Ferrari vorne ist. Entsprechend müssen wir weiterarbeiten, heute Abend alles analysieren und versuchen, morgen gestärkt zurückzuschlagen. Je näher wir dem Qualifying kommen, desto enger wird es zugehen, aber es wird ganz sicher ein harter Kampf."

"Das erste Training ist in Bahrain immer etwas knifflig, weil die Strecke noch ein wenig schmutzig ist und die Streckentemperaturen sehr hoch sind - viel höher als im Qualifying und dem Rennen. Die Fahrzeugbalance fühlte sich im ersten Training nicht besonders toll an. Aber wir konnten zwischen den Sessions ein paar Veränderungen vornehmen, wodurch sich das Auto im zweiten Training viel besser anfühlte. Es sieht so aus, als ob es sehr eng zwischen Ferrari und uns zugehen wird, aber sie sind hier eindeutig schneller als zuletzt in Melbourne. Uns steht also noch etwas Arbeit ins Haus, um unsere Abstimmung zu verbessern und auch ich habe noch ein wenig Verbesserungsspielraum. Es scheint ein harter Kampf zu werden, was ein sehr spannendes Qualifying zur Folge haben sollte."

“Overall, it’s been a productive day’s work in Bahrain. It’s always a tricky place to arrive to for the second Grand Prix of the year with the heat and challenging climatic conditions with wind and dust. There was a distinct lack of grip in FP1 making it quite hard to drive and become comfortable in the car; we had to deal with a lot of oversteer. FP2 was under more representative conditions and I feel we’ve made a good start for both short and long run preparation. Fifth place on the leaderboard always looks nice, but we’re realistic and have our focus totally on qualifying tomorrow.”

“Today was ok but it could have been better. On the medium tyre we look pretty competitive and I should have been fastest on my first short run but I had a little issue at the last corner which lost me two or three tenths. On the softest tyre I just didn’t have enough grip, so we need to look into that and extract more out of it. On the longer runs we also looked competitive on the medium tyre which should be the most dominant tyre for the race. We still have a bit of set-up work to do, especially as we will probably only get one timed lap on the tyres in qualifying. It also looks like the issues Ferrari had in Melbourne have been resolved, they look fastest at the moment so we need to work to close that gap.”

“I’m reasonably happy with our day. It was good to get FP2 in the darker, cooler conditions. FP1, well, it wasn’t scary, but it was very tricky with the hotter temperatures. It made the tires tricky, and the car was not behaving well, but it was the same for everyone. It was good to get into it in FP2, we got to see how the car acted in the conditions that we’ll have in qualifying tomorrow. I was happier in those conditions than in the earlier session, so that’s a positive. The car was behaving much better.”

“There are still things to improve upon but it’s been a decent start to the weekend. I feel more confident because I know the procedures a little more. I think FP1 went reasonably well: we got through everything we had to and I got a good feeling for the track. The track temperature in FP2 came down a lot meaning the car felt pretty different and obviously lap times were much faster. “We ended that session with a small issue which didn’t allow me to do as many laps as I wanted – but I still did a longer run on the higher fuel plus short runs at the beginning of the session, so I got a decent feeling.”

“We’ve done some good work today, and there’s more to be done before tomorrow. It was interesting to drive the car on a very hot track in FP1, then later in more representative conditions in FP2. We’re still learning about the VF-19, so I’m pretty happy to see how it performs. I’d like a bit more rear grip, especially on the long runs, that’s an area I think we can do a bit better, I’m confident we’ll find it. I think we’ve got some good margins to improve the car though, and that’s always a good thing before qualifying. We’ll be in the mix.”

“Generally, we had quite a productive Friday. We managed to cover all of the useful test items we planned for the day, and also covered both short and long runs – which is very important for Friday practice! It seems like everything is quite tight in terms of performance among the midfield teams, so we will work hard overnight to optimise the car for tomorrow in order to put us where we want to be.”

“It was a smooth Friday and we could complete our programme without any issues. Overall, the performance looks good and promising, but we know that tomorrow the others will turn up their engines, so we have to be cautious there. “Happy with today. We just need to make sure that one timed lap is nailed a bit better to maximise the result in quali. Still some margin to improve the car as well so I look forward to tomorrow.”

“I think the performance was really good in FP1 and at the start of FP2. The balance was not ideal, but that’s normal, especially as it was very hot this morning when we had the first session. This afternoon in FP2 we were fast with the medium tyres but then with the softs we were lacking some pace. I couldn’t really push on the first laps, so I had to do it on the third, which is not ideal. I think overall the car is good, we’re just missing a bit of pace with this set-up and need to improve our understanding of the soft tyres. I feel confident with the car, for sure it’s a different track than Melbourne so we need to optimise everything but I’m confident we can get it right tomorrow.”

“It was a pretty good day in the office. I think, as we’ve seen already, the midfield is really close which leaves no room for error. We struggled a bit with balance in the morning session but we were able to fix that for FP2, although we need to make some changes overnight to further improve the performance of the car. There’s definitely a few things we need to tune in order to be ready for tomorrow, so it’s just going to be about maximising the package we have and being at the sharp end of the midfield. We know what needs changing, so hopefully we can be more competitive tomorrow for Qualifying.”

“It’s been a challenging day to start our Bahrain weekend. We need to work hard to find a few tenths overnight and improve the balance of the car, otherwise it’ll be very difficult to reach Q3. The sessions earlier in the day, FP1 and FP3, are not that relevant because the temperatures are so much higher than what we expect for qualifying and the race, so the opportunities to work on the set-up are limited. We tried lots of things on the car today, which will help our learning in the long term, and we collected all the usual tyre information ahead of the race.”

“I struggled this afternoon and we were off the pace from where we would like. We started on the Hard tyre, which was tricky for grip, but once we put the Soft on it felt slightly more comfortable. I know there are things we can improve on, especially with the balance of the car. We conducted a lot of work to understand more about the car in the garage this afternoon and then we did the long run, which was a little better. We aren’t as competitive as we should be and obviously I want to be quicker tomorrow, so we will do some homework tonight.”

“It wasn’t easy today. We need to review the data and work hard to understand where we can find some more performance. The first session was very busy with big changes to the car – running different aero parts – and trying to understand the best direction for the rest of the weekend. We know it’s very competitive in the midfield so we have to find some speed tonight if we are to be in the top ten tomorrow.”

I enjoy driving in Bahrain it’s a really nice track with a good flow to it. I think we are very slightly closer, as the circuit generally suits the team more than others, but we are where we expected. FP1 was quite a challenge, however I think everybody was struggling out there in the hot conditions. FP2 was much nicer to drive but the laptimes are still a long way off and we have a lot of work to do. Whilst we are in this position we need to use it to optimise everything else so when the car does become competitive we are ready to pounce.

It wasn’t an easy day, but we know what we need to work on. After the first race I had some doubts and questions, but those have now gone. In Australia, I ran a different set-up to George and we could clearly see the different characteristics of the car, here we started with the same set-up and the characteristics are still different. I just hope we are able to solve it, but we have some tests to do so we understand the reasons.